Chapter XL, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 2

The losses of the German army in the advance from the Loire to the Sarthe were rather heavy: they amounted to 3,500 in killed and wounded. Those of the French were probably not much, if at all, more considerable. But after the battle of Le Mans not fewer than 16,000 unwounded prisoners are said to have fallen into the hands of the pursuing enemy.

Thus Chanzy, with a beaten and demoralised army, was driven back to a greater distance from Paris than ever; nor could any reasonable man now entertain the hope that whatever exertions he, or Gambetta on his behalf, might make, his army could again become formidable before the lapse of many weeks. But with the Parisians starvation was become an affair of a few days.

The bombardment began on the morning of the 5th January. There were three attacks - that directed against St. Denis and its forts; that against Fort Rosny and other eastern forts; and, lastly, that against the three southern forts, Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge. This was the principal attack, the forts being here commanded by the higher ground about Meudon and Clamart that was in the possession of the enemy, and no points having in this direction been seized and fortified by the French in advance of the forts, as was the case with the redoubts near Villejuif recovered and solidly held by General Vinoy. Two hundred guns concentrated their fire against these southern forts. The unimportant attack on the east was maintained by sixty guns, while a hundred and fifty thundered on St. Denis from the north. Issy, on account of the too great distance between it and Mont Yalérien, was the fort against which, more than any other, the Germans could bring to bear a concentric fire, and it was accordingly more knocked about than any of the rest. The most formidable of the German batteries, containing twenty-four pieces, was on the terrace of Meudon. From the whole of them an average shower of ten thousand projectiles per diem was rained, during the continuance of the bombardment, on the forts and on Paris. In the daytime the fire was chiefly directed at the forts, in the night it was turned against the city. After a lull, the batteries would wake up into a diabolical activity about midnight, the guns being aimed high, and sending their shells among the sleeping population of the distant city. The promise of Count Bismark, expressed with more force than elegance, that the Parisians should "fry in their own gravy," was now fulfilled. Thanks to the distance, and to the number and extent of the open spaces within the enceinte, the mortality caused by the bombardment was far less than might have been expected; absolutely, however, its victims were not few. Ninety-seven persons (including thirty-one children and twenty-three women) not employed in the defence were killed by the bombardment, and two hundred and seventy-eight (including thirty- six children and ninety women) were wounded. Among the public buildings and institutions injured by it were, the Jardin des Plantes, the Pantheon, the Val de Grace, the Observatory, the Church of St. Sulpice, and the Hotel des Invalides. Nothing, says General Vinoy, could be more admirable than the behaviour of the people while the bombardment was going on. The effect of it was to harden rather than weaken the spirit of resistance; and Trochu, forced as it were by the enthusiasm of those by whom he was surrounded, declared (January 6) that he would never capitulate. The effect of the fire upon the forts was far less than the Germans had expected. Even of Fort Issy the defences were far from being ruined; it could still have held out a long time after the capitulation was settled. In fact, the German batteries were too far off; and it is General Vinoy's opinion that even now, with all the change in artillery, if a commander wishes to reduce a fortress by force, not by famine or " moral pressure," he must resort to the old methods of sap, and mine, and parallel.

The last great military operation attempted by the besieged was a sortie, in force, in the direction of Versailles, made on the 19th January. This affair is sometimes called the battle of Montretout. The council of war which ordered the movement can hardly have expected much from it; perhaps its failure was counted upon as likely to reconcile the Parisians to that capitulation which the leaders knew could not be deferred beyond a few days. A force of 84,000 men was sent out on this sortie; Ducrot commanding on the right, Bellemare in the centre, and Yinoy on the left. Sallying from under the guns of Mont Valérien, the troops under the command of Vinoy carried with a rush the greater part of the buildings of St. Cloud and the redoubt of Montretout. General Bellemare also, in the centre, drove back the enemy from their first line; but Ducrot, whose troops had farther to march, delayed hour after hour to come up on Bellemare's right, and when he did appear his attack was feeble and did not push back the German lines. Meantime the enemy had brought up a number of guns to bear upon Montretout, to which Vinoy, through the weakness of the artillery horses and the blocked condition of the road from Mont Valérien, found it impossible to bring up enough pieces to make an effectual reply. In the end the whole French army was driven back under the guns of Mont Valérien, with a loss of 3,000 men killed and wounded. A battalion of Mobiles, 300 strong, was accidentally cut off at St. Cloud when the troops retired; no other prisoners appear to have been taken.

When the failure of the sortie became known through Paris, furious indignation was expressed against Trochu among the revolutionary classes. Foremost in the outcry were the battalions of the National Guard, recruited among those very classes, belonging to Montmartre and Belleville, which had shown least courage in the field, and had first abandoned the ranks and made their way- back to Paris. Trochn, who knew that there was nothing more to be done in the way of resistance, and who, after his late declaration, could not decently negotiate for a capitulation, resigned the command of the Army of Paris. General Vinoy, much against his will, and only because an émeute had broken out on the 22nd which it was of the utmost importance to the salvation of all honest people promptly to put down, accepted the vacant command. The Reds broke open the Mazas prison, and liberated the conspirator Flourens; after that they attacked the Hotel de Ville, but a battalion of the Mobiles of Finisterre (Bretagne), installed in the building, fired from the windows upon the rioters, and easily dispersed them.

Paris was at the end of her resources. She could not wait to know the result of the great combination - Gambetta's masterpiece - by which Bourbaki, at the head of 130,000 unhappy conscripts, had been impelled against Werder and the German communications. Of that expedition we shall speak presently; but whether it succeeded or not, not a day was to be lost in coming to any terms whereby a fresh supply of food might be obtained for the 1,800,000 persons cooped up in Paris. Jules Favre visited the German head-quarters on the 24th January, and on several days afterwards, to arrange for a capitulation and an armistice. At seven o'clock in the evening of the 26th, General Vinoy received the order to cause all the forts and field works to cease firing by midnight on the same day. The order was obeyed, and the siege of Paris was at an end.

This memorable siege may be divided into two periods - the investment, and the active siege - the former lasting from the 19th September to the 27th December, when fire was first opened on Mont Avron; the latter, from the last-named date to the capitulation. The Germans, in the opinion of General Vinoy, executed every operation connected with the investment with the utmost ability and completeness. They drew a girdle a hundred kilometres in length round the city so tight that all communication between it and the country outside practically ceased; and it was to this investment, and to the imminence of famine which it caused, that the fall of Paris was due. On the other hand, the active part of the siege was, in the General's opinion, mismanaged from first to last. It involved a maximum of expenditure of ammunition with a minimum of destruction to the defences, sacrificed to no purpose the lives of a number of helpless civilians, and did not hasten the surrender by a single hour.

The convention establishing both a capitulation and an armistice for the masses of the belligerent armies was signed by Bismark and Favre, at Versailles, on the 28th January. The military details were arranged on behalf of France by General Beaufort d'Hautpoul. The armistice was to last twenty-one days, and was to be established wherever military operations were being actually carried on, except in the departments of Doubs, Jura, and Côte d'Or; the siege of Belfort also was to continue. Bismark would have readily consented to extend the armistice to these departments also; but unfortunately Jules Favre (who must have reposed a confidence in the strategy of his colleague, Gambetta, which few Frenchmen could at this time have shared) fancied that Bourbaki had achieved, or was about to achieve, great things, of which the relief of Belfort was the least; he would not therefore include his army in the armistice. The object of the cessation of hostilities was declared to be, the convocation by the Government of a freely-elected National Assembly, which was to meet at Bordeaux, and to decide whether the war should be continued or not. The forts of Paris, with all guns and war material contained in them, were at once to be surrendered to the German army, which, during the continuance of the armistice, was not to enter the city- The guns forming the armament of the enceinte were also to be surrendered. The entire garrison of Paris were to become prisoners of war and to lay down their arms, except a division of 12,000 men, which the military authorities would retain for the maintenance of internal order. After giving up their arms, the soldiers were to remain within the enceinte during the armistice. All corps of Francs-tireurs were at once dissolved by order of the French Government. After the surrender of the forts, the reprovisioning of Paris would proceed without let or hindrance by all the ordinary channels of traffic, except that no supplies were to be drawn from the territory occupied by the German troops. A war contribution amounting to £8,000,000 sterling was imposed on the city of Paris.

The terms of the armistice were punctually carried out, and on the 29th January the German troops were put in possession of the forts. All along the line, except in the three departments and before Belfort, the combatants dropped their arms. In that region a crowning disaster had already overtaken the last convulsive efforts of France. The reader will remember that when Gambetta, after the second capture of Orleans by the Germans, divided the Army of the Loire into two parts, he placed that part which retained the name of the First Army, consisting of the 15th, 18th, and 20th Corps, under the command of Bourbaki, who had placed his services at the disposal of the Government. Gambetta calculated that Prince Frederick Charles would fear to leave so large a force as that of Bourbaki free to threaten the investing army or the German communications, while he marched against Chanzy. But that experienced and able commander knew how to gauge an army by its quality as well as by its quantity - a knowledge which Gambetta never attained. The "Besieged Resident" wrote from Paris that it was commonly said there that Chanzy and Bourbaki had surrounded Prince Frederick Charles, while to a few, less hopefully disposed, it appeared that the Prince had got between them; the latter proved to be the real state of the case. The plan of d'Aurelle, to concentrate the whole army on a strong position south of Orleans, and occupy some time in re-forming its wasted ranks and improving its discipline, was evidently the only reasonable one. France would then in a few days have had-one formidable army: under Gambetta's plan, she-had two armies, neither of which was in the least formidable.

Prince Frederick Charles, upon finding that Bourbaki had marched away on some expedition to the eastward, had not the slightest fear but that, against an army composed of such loose and untried materials, Moltke would furnish a force sufficient to ward off its feeble strokes; he therefore put the great masses of the Second Army in motion to overwhelm Chanzy, and succeeded in doing so as we have seen.

In the east, General "Werder, an. officer of great-ability and undaunted resolution, made head at Dijon for a long time against the French forces mustering to overpower him. On the 18th December, he marched from Dijon upon Nuits, a place on the railway between Dijon and Lyons, where a force of about 20,000 men had been collected under General Cremer. After a hard-fought action, the French were defeated and driven out of Nuits. Some days later, Werder routed the Garibaldians at Pasques, as has been already related. But now the movements of the large army which had been collected under Bourbaki began to develop themselves, and Dijon became a position too far to the west to be advantageous; it was therefore evacuated by the Germans on the 28th December, and immediately, occupied by Garibaldi and Cremer. The three corps which had been placed under the command of Bourbaki, together with the 24th Corps (Bressolle), which was to be moved up from Lyons to co-operate in the movement, formed an army of about 130,000 men. With this force Bourbaki was expected to fall upon Werder and overpower him, raise the siege of Belfort, and, crossing the Rhine, to carry the war into Germany; while Garibaldi and Cremer, after the defeat of Werder, fell on the great German line of communications by the Strasburg-Paris railway. With seasoned troops, and in the hands of a commander accustomed to handle large masses of men, the operation would probably have succeeded. Even with raw troops and an unskilful general, some measure of success might have been attained had the movement been made in the summer and not in the winter. But under the actual circumstances the enterprise was foredoomed to failure; and Bourbaki himself seemed to feel this, for he fell into a deep depression of spirits, terminating in actual aberration of mind. Gambetta had associated with him a Polish adventurer calling himself De Serres, described by Colonel Rüstow as a " young swindler," to whose interference Bourbaki would scarcely have submitted had not his mind been already disordered. Entering Dijon on the 2nd January, 1871, Bourbaki directed the main body of his army to concentrate round the fortress of Besançon, whence in two or three days he led it to the relief of Belfort, moving through the broken country between the parallel streams of the Oignon and the Doubs. Werder, who had fallen back from Dijon on Vesoul, the capital of the department of the Haute Saone, attacked Bourbaki's left flank on the 9th January, at Villersexel, on the Oignon, his object being to gain time for the main body of his troops to fall back on the line of the Lisaine, in front of Belfort, and fortify a position there. The action at Villersexel was indecisive, but the march of the French was delayed by it, and Werder gained the time which he so greatly needed.